


Nightfall

by bellepeppertronix



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Hurt but no comfort, Lovers To Enemies, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-07-29 15:29:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7689961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellepeppertronix/pseuds/bellepeppertronix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, Gabriel would hate himself a little for not stopping Jack and telling him what was really going on.<br/>He would hate Jack even more for being so oblivious when something was obviously wrong--for not even knowing or caring enough to see what was wrong.</p>
<p>(Gabriel Reyes is a man who has given himself to Overwatch entirely.<br/>It is years before he realizes the organization is not going to give him anything back in return.<br/>This starts as a love story and ends up in bitter tragedy.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ao3 is randomly italicizing entire chunks of this, and i've checked and re-checked my html tags over and over and??? so please bear with me. The italicized sections do not indicate anything special is going on, no time-shifts or perspective changes or anything; they are accidental and I will correct them as soon as I can. Enjoy reading!

The first time Gabriel heard about the raids, he was on leave himself.  
Jolted from a tenuous sleep, he sat up into dim, linty-smelling darkness barred with light from the streetlamps outside. 

His phone was buzzing on the nightstand, and when he slapped at the digital clock in his attempts to grab it, he saw it was 8:30 pm.  
He rubbed his face and finally actually looked at his phone’s screen.  
The contact said ‘Jack’.

He accepted the call, sighing and leaning his forehead into his palm as he pressed the phone to his ear.  
“What’s wrong?” he asked.

^^^

Four days later he and Jack were sitting in some no-name diner, Gabriel feeling so jet-lagged and tired that he felt like he was made of wood, Jack looking positively haggard.

Gabriel had an unmarked black backpack snugged under one arm; Jack had a rolled-up overcoat and a small blue duffel, torn slightly at one corner. Everything about him looked grimy and worn-down.  
“The mission went bad,” Gabriel said, his voice flat.

Jack glanced around nervously--despite it being four in the morning and there being exactly two other people in the restaurant--one bleary-eyed waitress and the line cook shuffling around in the back.  
“We can’t just talk about that here in--”  
“I already know what happened.”

He reached into his backpack, slapped down a folio of papers in a manila folder held together with a binder clip. The folder was unlabeled, but Jack’s eyes bulged as if it had a giant red ‘Classified’ stamp on the front.

“How? There’s no way--”  
Gabe sighed. “Jack, I’ve known about them for months.” He paused and sat back, crossing his arms. “I had been hoping they wouldn’t send anyone after them.”  
“Let’s…let’s not talk about this here,” Jack mumbled.  
Gabe huffed a little. “I just got back. There’s no food back at my place.”  
“Gabe.” Jack said.  
When the waitress came, they ordered two coffees to go, and paid in cash before they left.

 

The small dining nook felt like alien terrain. Gabe’s bags were still piled in the corner behind the table, the blinds down. The plain pine table was bare except for the pot of succulents his mother had pressed on him as a housewarming gift, unaware of how rarely he’d be there to ever nejoy them.  
They sat opposite each other around the small table, staring at the tabletop, the walls, the stove, anywhere but each other.  
Finally Jack spoke. 

“ _Why_ did they send us in there? They were--they were just a bunch of college kids!”  
“I know.”  
“They told us they were gun-runners, told us they were armed, that it was an immediate threat. We--I--I didn’t _know_ \--How could they send us--” Jack choked after a moment, his hands clenched into fists. He was staring off into the middle distance over Gabriel’s left shoulder.  
Gabriel sighed and settled lower in his chair.

“Did it ever occur to you that it might have been set up?”  
_That_ snapped Jack out of it. “What?”  
“The leaders were all ‘politically disadvnatageous’ to the local politicians. People called in favors and made some deals.”

Jack stared at him long and hard for a moment, before his face twisted. “Gabriel, for _crying out loud_ , I just--not everything is a fucking conspiracy!”  
“I didn’t say it was,” Gabriel said, still calm. God, he was tired. He took a sip of his coffee and looked away from Jack, licking his teeth. The coffee tasted like dirt brewed in a filthy sock, burnt so badly the flavor was barely recongizeable as coffee. He continued, “I just told you the truth. And the intel was all readily available. I didn’t even have to work hard to get it.”

He tapped the manila folder with two fingers; Jack snatched it up and yanked the clip off, flipped through a few pages, and then looked back up at Gabriel with cold, glittering eyes.  
“There was no way I could have gotten access to any of this,” he said.  
“Everyone has the Internet in their pocket, Jack,” Gabriel said. 

“I was _on mission, Gabe_!” Jack snapped. He threw the folio back on the table, harder than necessary, and a few pages slid out. Two of them were snapshots of two of the college kids--a smiling black youth in a red sweatshirt, his arms around a black girl in an identical sweatshirt. They both had ‘Sierra Vista College’ printed across the front in big white varsity letters. The second photo was a young Latino man, in a black button-up shirt with white pinstripes, his hair slicked back. He was holding a diploma in one hand and a mortarboard in the other.

Gabriel stared at the photos a moment before very slowly reaching out and shuffling them back together, sliding the pages back into the folder and reattaching the clip.  
“You didn’t look because you didn’t want to.”  
“I didn’t look because I was _trying_ to be a good soldier! I had my orders! As far as we knew, they were mobilizing to attack!”

“Mobilizing to attack who, Jack? Who were their targets?”  
“The police were saying they were a threat, that they’d been agitating for months, that the situation was escalating to dangerous levels.”  
“So good soldiers just do what they’re told without asking what’s going on? Didn’t they brief you at all? You were the commander of the entire operation, Jack,” Gabriel said.

“Oh, I’m _sorry_ , but _law enforcement officials_ tell me there’s a group of agitators _stockpiling weapons_ and my first instinct is to rush to stop them from hurting anyone, when _clearly_ I should have been playing Dick Gumshoe and asking 21 questions about their motives and where they graduated from!”

“Maybe if you had, they’d still be alive!” Gabriel said. His anger finally simmered over; he slammed one fist down on the table. Their coffee cups jumped in place; some sloshed out of his, brown droplets splatterig on the blonde wood of the table.  
“You would have done the _exact_ same thing in my position!” Jack snarled.

“I would have _at least_ tried to verify the intel before rushing in there guns akimbo and shooting _everyone_.”  
“THEY HAD A _ROOMFUL OF GUNS_ , GABE.”  
“They _ALSO_ all had _LEGAL LICENSES _!”  
Jack wasn’t looking at him, annoyed; Gabriel could see the vein in his temple jumping with the force he was gritting his teeth with.__

___“You don’t keep an entire room full of weapons like that unless you’re planning--”_  
“--To protect yourself from the _exact thing_ that you and your squad did to them.”  
“I had DIRECT ORDERS, Gabe! It wasn’t as if I could tell Overwatch High Command, ‘No, thank you, I’d rather not do this, send me to get ice cream instead’! You forget, Gabe, that _you_ get to skulk around in the shadows. The cameras are _always_ on me, on everything I do. You think I can afford to tell them anything they don’t want to hear? I had a _job_ to do! I’m a _soldier_! We _both_ are! It just seems like since _one_ of us got a covert-ops job, _he_ seems to think he’s immune to criticism!” 

__“I ‘get to’ skulk around in the shadows, huh? You have no idea what kind of work I do, Jack. What kinds of work I _have_ to do.”  
Jack scoffed, sneering and laughing in his face. “Oh, yeah, of course! Hammering bamboo slivers under the fingernails of drug lords to get them to tell you where they hid their offshore stashes of cocaine! _such_ important work, how could I forget! Oh, OHOHO, but of course we can’t be allowed to forget who the _hero_ of the WAR that ended _YEARS AGO_ , right? And how that makes EVERYTHING ELSE YOU EVER DO ‘CORRECT’, RIGHT?”_ _

___Gabe twitched all over, clenching his fists so tight he could feel his short fingernails biting into his palms._  
“You know I can’t even talk about--”  
“Oh, oh! _this_ again! See, Gabe, see--there’s your problem. You can criticize as much as you want, you can dump _all_ kinds of shit on everyone else, but you can’t take _any_ in return! And of course you’re _always_ right, Commander Gabriel Reyes, whose work is so ‘important and so highly classified’ that he can’t even _mention_ it! The guy with _all_ the intel, who knows _everything_ , but can’t tell _anyone_ whose molars he had to rip out to get it!” 

___“Jack--” Gabe said, warningly, but Jack continued, still without looking at him._  
“And of course, of _course_ everything _I_ do is wrong! Because it’s not what _YOU_ would do in this situation, right?”  
“NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT _YOU_ , JACK!” Gabriel shouted, loudly enough that the force of it left even his own ears ringing. He continued, more questly, “No matter how much HQ makes you feel like that _should_ be the case.” 

__“Yeah, well, at least one of us has a _job_ important enough that he still regularly gets summoned to _speak_ to command,” Jack said. He flicked Gabriel with another look like a red-hot lash, and continued, “And the _other_ is the guy they lock poor, unlucky sonsofbitches who know too much in basements with, so he can rip the truth out of them, one battery clamp to the balls at a time!”_ _

___Gabriel slammed his fists down on the table again, so hard he upset his coffee._  
Hot liquid sloshed everywhere; he leapt to his feet, knocking the chair back into the wall so hard he heard a crack.  
“ _STOP IT_! You _KNOW_ I told you--” 

___But Jack was already out the door by the time Gabriel was even on his feet; and he was already gone and almost to the corner by the time he made it to the door._  
Gabriel stood in the doorway feeling so full he was going to explode, rage and humiliation pressing hot and tight beneath his lungs, in the back of his throat, buzzing in his ears.  
He slammed the door shut and grabbed his chair with its cracked back, and smashed it into splinters against the floor, howling with rage. 

__

__Jack crept back in the small hours of dawn the next day, after Gabriel had exhausted the fury of his grief alone in the shower._ _

__After he’d stormed out, Gabriel had cleaned the kitchen, salvaged what he could of the dossier, locked it in the cabinet in his office. There was no evidence left of the chair, the other pushed in neatly against the table and the absence of the other conspicuous as a broken-out window.  
Everything seemed to matter, to excruciating detail. _ _

__He’d stayed in the house, alone, and waited like a kicked dog for Jack to come back. There really hadn’t been any food, so he’d spent the entire day doing nothing but drinking black coffee and watching the window, chewing himself up inside with his own thoughts._ _

__He was lying in bed with his eyes and nose still swollen and the knuckles of both his hands aching and bruised where they’d met too many times with the tiles in the bathroom walls. He was facing the wall, one hand tucked under the pillow and the other between his thighs, out of Jack’s sight. The last thing he wanted was pity-care.  
When he heard the door open, the adrenaline went straight to his gut, a sudden jolt that felt like it should have been happiness, but came out like panic._ _

__He could hear Jack’s feet on the wood floor, his boots making quiet scudding noises as he moved closer to the bed. Gabriel was facing the window, away from Jack, and he didn’t move._ _

__“I…I’m…I know you don’t…torture anyone,” Jack said. “I didn’t mean what I said. I was just…I let my mouth run.”  
Jack stank like outside, wet grass and asphalt and alcohol he’d probably drunk far too much of just to feel a buzz. _ _

__Gabriel didn’t respond to his words. He took another slow, deep breath, feigning sleep, though his eyes were open and staring into the darkness.  
“I just didn’t know. Gabe, please, you have to believe me, I didn’t know. I was just following orders…” _ _

___The same tired words. Gabriel could feel something twist in his chest._  
Jack was about to start solipsising about being a soldier again, and Gabe had already heard every possible variant of this, and did not want to hear any more.  
When Jack touched his shoulder, he pretended to start awake. 

___“What?” he mumbled, keeping one cheek mashed into the pillow. He didn’t want his voice to betray him--he sounded snotty and choked-up still, despite it being hours since he’d embarrassed himself like that in the shower, alone with his humiliation._  
He was so fucking tired.  
“You understand, right?” Jack said. 

___Something in his voice, the pleading tone, made Gabriel finally look over at him._  
“You understand? I was just following orders? Please, Gabe, tell me…please, talk to me. Tell me everything’s going to be okay. Tell me you understand.”  
And Jack’s eyes were shining but his breath stank of booze.  
The rotten, twisting feeling worsened. Gabe could feel his skin crawling, the hairs on his arms standing up. 

__He rolled away from Jack, taking his pillow off the bed as he went, and Jack’s disbelieving call of his name followed him into the living room.  
Jack didn’t come try to get him off the couch._ _

__It hadn’t always been this way._ _

__^^^_ _

__The whole place sparkled.  
There were wrought-iron chandeliers glittering with crystal, a literal actual ballroom dance floor, wood parquet inlaid in an ornate pattern of interlocking squares, and starched white tablecloths with burgundy napkins folded into decorous tricornes in the center of the huge white plates. Overhead the ceilings were dark-varnished and deeply-vaulted, contrasting with the immaculate bone-white plaster of the walls. The floor, other than the dance-floor, was adobe-red brick burnished smooth with age and many well-heeled feet passing over it in decourous slowness. There were big, glossy-leafed ferns in beautiful, ornately-painted terra-cotta vases scattered around, and their table was near enough one that he could smell its faint green-forest smell. To their left, a window opened out over the lighted patio below, and its view of the city lights stretching away into the velvet-blue evening. _ _

___Jack was pretty easy on the eyes that night, as well, in navy-blue slacks and powder-blue shirt that fit him like a dream and made his eyes look like pools of sky and his hair like summer wheat. Gabriel had kept his own look simple, a charcoal-colored shirt with dull-colored steel buttons over black slacks._  
“Whoa, Gabe,” Jack said, for the third time.  
“You like it?” he said, smiling. 

___Jack looked at him like he’d hung the stars from the ceiling._  
“I’m not gonna have to worry about which fork to use, am I?” he asked.  
Gabe laughed. “Don’t worry, I made sure to use a big bill when I reserved the table. We can afford to be tacky.” 

__When the waiter came with the menus, Jack took one look and gave up, laughing a little. When he did, his whole face turned pink with slight embarrassment, and Gabriel fell a little bit harder for him._ _

___“What, you didn’t pay attention in school?” he teased._  
“They didn’t offer Spanish at my school!” Jack protested.  
Gabriel gave him a disbelieving look. “Jack…”  
“Really! They offered German and French. No Spanish, though.”  
Then it was Gabriel’s turn to laugh, breathless and helpless. “So, which do you speak?” he asked.  
“Huh?” Jack asked. 

___The way Jack looked when he was trying to figure something out was a face Gabriel decided he wanted framed. He wanted to see more of all the man’s other faces, too._  
“Which language? French or German?” Gabriel continued. “French could be interesting in the bedroom. Or maybe German--everyting they say sounds vaguely kinky, you know?”  
Jack laughed so hard he snorted a little, and Gabe laughed, too. 

__“My _grandmother_ used to speak German on the phone to my grand-uncles who lived over there,” Jack said. “Nooot exactly the kind of thing I want associated with bedroom talk, if you know what I mean.”_ _

__Gabriel laughed again, shaking his head. “Language association. Okay, okay, I get it.” He looked Jack up an down, biting his lip and smiling. “So, French, then?”  
Jack laughed again. “No, no, neither! Listen, I wasn’t great at languages. I think I learned how to ask where the bathroom is in German, and about nine different words for cabbage, and all of that was from my grandmother.”_ _

___“You know, that’s funny…I never knew ‘Morrison’ was a German surname,” Gabriel said, and stroked his goatee._  
Jack made a swatting gesture at him, grinning. “My mom took my dad’s last name. They were old-fashioned like that.”  
“Ah.”  
“Yeah…anyway, um. So, what’s good here?”  
At that, Gabriel snorted a little, laughing quietly. “I have no idea. This place serves Spanish food.” 

___Jack gave him a blank look. “But you’re…”_  
“I grew up in Los Angeles.”  
Then they both laughed. “So we’re both pretty clueless here, huh?” Jack said. 

__Gabriel only smiled back, looking at the way everything was perfect and Jack seemed to glow. He was actually feeling conpletely content.  
“You know? I think we can manage.”_ _

__By the time the waiter had come back, they’d decided what they wanted, so Gabriel ordered for both of them in loose, fluid Castilian Spanish. The waiter had raised his eyebrows but then looked pleased, nodding as he accepted their menus and sweeping away to place their orders._ _

___“That sounded…different,” Jack said, once he’d finished._  
Gabriel looked over at him, one eyebrow raised. “What did?”  
“That,” Jack said, nodding in the waiter’s direction. “The Spanish.”  
“Ah,” Gabriel said. He felt pleased that Jack had noticed. “That’s because that was Castilian, not Mexican Spanish,” he explained. “The way you speak it is, clench your ass really tight, purse your lips like you’re scared someone is going to try to steal your gold fillings, and act like a pompous jackass.” 

___Jack laughed again. “So, you speak…Spanish-Spanish? I didn’t even know there was a difference.”_  
Gabriel shrgged a little, smiling. “English is the same way. Do you talk the same way the King of England talks?”  
“Hah! No…And I never thought of it that way.” Jack said. He paused a moment, and then asked, “Have you ever been? To Spain, I mean.” 

__Gabriel shook his head. “Nah, you know how it goes. I’d always wanted to go, but life kept interrupting. And now that I’m officially ‘older’,” he said, leaning forward a little, “I decided I’d kind of rather go with someone else, you know? That way I had someone to see the sights with. And spend all that time with, in those nice hotels…on those fancy sheets…”  
That startled a blush and another laugh out of Jack, well worth the entire evening already, Gabriel thought. _ _

__Then the thunderclap came.  
About halfway through their meal, an older couple came in--a pair of white men overdressed in an obvious way that screamed self-conscious wealth: tailored black suits and shoes that probably cost as much as a car, put together. _ _

__Gabriel wouldn’t have paid them any attention at all, except they were sitting at a table diagonal to them, and they kept staring at him.  
The one--a brunet man who looked like a squeezed bullfrog--was much more brazen than the other, a thin waspish-looking man with gray hair scraped back from a high, pale, creased forehead. _ _

___Jack was saying something that Gabriel wouldn’t remember later, because of what he _did__ remember, which was the brunet tapping the back of the hand of the gray-hair, who turned to look at him, next. He raised his eyebrows, looked at Jack, looked back at Gabriel, and then looked back at the brunet.  
The two of them shared a disapproving look, before turning to stare at Gabriel.  
He felt a creeping sense of wrongness. 

__There was no table behind them; and for awhile he sat there wracking his brain, wondering if he knew them from somewhere--some stuffed-shirt commanders grandfathered into Overwatch command from some other branch of the armed forces, or else diplomats whose hands he may or may not have shaken._ _

___But they weren’t looking at Jack at all, he realized, so they weren’t senior officers or diplomats, because they certainly would have recognized Jack, at least._  
The realization dawned on him with an amazing suddenness of clarity.  
He felt like someoen had thrown scalding water in his face. 

__Jack finished whatever he was saying with a flourish and a laugh, and the sound washed back into the world; Gabriel looked back over at him, not sure what his face was doing, but knowing it wasn’t something good, because Jack looked confused.  
“Gabe? What’s wrong?”_ _

__It was supposed to be a nice night, he told himself.  
He made up his mind to try to keep it that way._ _

__He shook his head a little, forced a smile. “Nothing, sorry. I thought I saw something. What were you saying about your friend and the mechanical bull?”_ _

__^^^_ _

___Later, as they walked down the long, lighted promenade in front of the restuaurant, under brick arches garlanded with heavy white roses, he still wasn’t feeling himself._  
The roses’ perfume was as thick and almost soapy, the strands of lights overhead throwing seductively dim pools of light onto the flagstone pavement beneath their feet; Jack was leaning against him, their fingers entertwined, his stomach was full of good food and good wine, and he knew he should have been happy.  
He should have been walking on the fucking moon. 

__Instead he felt wrong, rmembering how they’d stared like he was an escaped zoo animal in a suit. It had gotten worse; eventually they’d called the waiter over to their table and said _something_ to the man, who had glanced over at Gabriel himself. Eventually the waiter had ended up escorting the white couple to a different table in another part of the restaurant, separated from them by tall dark-vasnished wooden doors with frosted-glass panels._ _

__That was when he’d realized their table--the table he and Jack were sitting at--was in a corner behind a plant, and the restroom was literally around the corner.  
That was also when he realized he’d been a fool to bother reserving a table in the first place, because when he showed up they’d clearly decided he wasn’t even worth a decent spot. _ _

__^^^_ _

__“OOOkay, seriously, what’s going on?” Jack asked. He’d thrown an arm over Gabriel’s shoulders and made it more or less obvious that he wasn’t going to let go until Gabriel said _something_._ _

__Gabriel tongued the inside of one cheek, looking away from Jack. He glanced back at the restaurant’s facade, the whitewashed arches lit up with their amber-colored lanterns in their wrought-iron sconces.  
Finally he said, “Those two old guys kept staring at me.”_ _

___Jack’s face went blank for a minute, before he jostled him a little, smiling. He said, “Oh, _them__! I noticed…I just figured maybe you knew ‘em from somewhere.”  
“Well, I don’t.”  
Jack looked away, shrugging. “Well, I mean,” he looked back at Gabe, flicking an appreciative eye over him. “You _do_ look pretty handsome. Good enough to eat, I’d say…” 

___He was leaning in for a kiss when Gabriel gently removed his arm from his shoulders and stepped away a little._  
“That’s…not why they were staring at me, Jack.”  
Jack snorted a laugh. “Why _else_ would they stare at you? You’re a babe, you’re all decked out, damn, I just want to--” 

__He slipped closer, his arms going around Gabriel again. This time he kissed him full-on the lips and Gabriel let him, tasting the boozy sweetness of the wine they’d had at dinnertime. He slipped his arms around Jack, as well, feeling how solid he was in his arms, the heat coming off him into Gabriel’s hands._ _

__When they finally broke away from each other, Jack moaned, just a little, and bit his lip. “Let the old geezers be jealous, okay? It’s not every day you see a guy as hot as you just walking around in public. But, unfortunately for _them_ , already taken,” he said, grinning.  
And Gabriel let him reel him in for another kiss, mouths sliding sticky-sickly-sweet against each other’s, under the roses, under the strings of golden lights._ _

__Later, Gabriel would hate himself a little for not stopping Jack and telling him what was really going on.  
He would hate Jack even more for being so oblivious when something was obviously wrong--for not even knowing or caring enough to be offended for him._ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things start to fall apart

“Wow,” Jack said, his eyes wide. “Just…wow…”  
Gabriel closed the car door and came up beside him, slipping one hand into Jack’s and feeling a thrill of affection when the otherman turned his head, grinning in excitement.

“I can’t believe you’ve never been to the beach,” Gabriel said. He pulled Jack closer, gave him a peck on the jaw. His arm went around Jack’s waist as he pulled him closer and bumped their hips, his hand comfortably sliding into Jack’s pants pocket.  
“I’ve been to the beach,” Jack grumbled, elbowing Gabriel in the side. He was smiling, though, “At lakes and whatnot. Just…never to the ocean…” He looked back at the steel-blue stretch of the Pacific, lapping placidly against the California shore. 

“So? How does it measure up to those lakes in the midwest, huh?”   
Jack laughed, a helpless huff of breath that Gabriel felt through his ribcage as he exhaled.   
“I just didn’t expect there’d be so MUCH of it,” Jack said, after a long moment.   
Then he gave Gabe a mischevous look. “Last one in buys dinner?” 

“Wait, wait, wait--Jack, we can’t actually go swimming here. The water’s full of great white sharks.” Gabriel said. “There was a warning sign and everything. Didn’t you see?”  
“What?” Jack said, looking back up at the parking lot where they’d left the truck. There were seceral signposts--no dogs, no bonfires, no camping.  
Jack looked back at him, incredulous. “Seriously? Gabe, did you bring me to the beach…to LOOK at the water?”

Gabriel bit his lip and shrugged a little, hefting the blanket and beach parasol he had under one arm. “Well, you know…I was kinda hoping we could do something other than swim. There’s this kiosk down the way where you can rent tandem bikes…”  
“You brought me to a shark-infested beach to proposition me to ride bikes up and down the boardwalk like a pair of old fogeys?” Jack said. He put one hand on his hip and was gesturing with the other, apparently unconscious of how completely adorable he was. 

Gabriel looked away, then back at Jack, shrugging again. “Well, the view is nice. Figured we could go bird-watching. Isn’t that the kind of thing you’d do at a lake in…?”  
Jack scoffed and rolled his eyes, half-amused and half-disbelieving. “Oh my _god_ , Gabriel, I’m a country boy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in having _fun_! You’re…you’re really serious? We can’t go swimming?”  
Gabriel shrugged, chewing his lips. 

Jack sighed and seemed to sag all over. “Well, you’re right. The view _is_ nice…I guess we could just eat lunch by the water…”  
Gabriel couldn’t hold it in anymore. He snickered and had to disguise it as a cough, and rubbed at his nose and mouth, looking away from Jack.  
“What?” Jack said. “Gabriel? Are you okay?”  
Gabriel burst into laughter, finally, and said, “I was joking, about the sharks. That’s up in central California. All you have to worry about down here is bottlecaps and soda-can tabs.”

They set up their area, staking the parasol and unrolling their towels in its high-noon round of shadow. Gabriel took the cans of drinks they had and went down to the water-line and buried them in the cold, damp sand there, shushing Jack’s complaints.  
“It’s not like it’s glass. And besides, most of the ice in the cooler is melted, anyway. You better hope the food survived okay, Rubito.”  
“Everything’s wrapped in foil!” Jack protested. “ _And_ plastic-wrap!”  
“ _And_ we sat in that L.A. traffic for almost two hours. Come on!”

Later, when they were lying on the beach, pleasantly breathless and soaking wet and sandy where they’d lain down, Jack stretched himself and rolled to face Gabriel, half-propping himself up on one arm.  
“Ana and Reinhardt and Angela and everyone would have loved this,” he said.  
Gabriel was laying flat on his back, half-on and half-off a black towel that had a design of flames and red roses all over it. 

He scoffed a little, laughing. “Reinhardt loves swimming, but he has that German white-boy skin and would have got sunburnt so bad he’d need to spend a week in a burn ward; Angela has the same problem, _and_ she hates sand…”  
Jack laughed a little, sifting sand through his fingers and pulling up buried strands of blackened dried sea-grass. “Well, what about Ana?”

“...The only reason I didn’t invite her was because I wanted you all to myself,” Gabriel said. He stuffed his hand under the sand near Jack’s and poked his fingers out, wiggling them, until Jack snickered a little and piled more sand on top of them.  
“You’re so cheesy sometimes,” he said.  
“You love it,” Gabriel said.  
Jack sat up properly, and leaned over Gabriel’s face, peppering him with kisses.  
“I do.” 

~

Gabriel was washing the sand out of his hair and thinking it was time to buzz it short again. He was still pleasantly sore from swimming--even whatever supersoldier crap they’d jacked him up on apparently didn’t get rid of aches and pains completely, but he knew without it he’d probably be so wiped he’d just want to fall into bed and go to sleep.

Instead, he wanted to ask Jack if he wanted to go for a run, maybe down to the cafe around the corner that sold conchas and coffee and was open all night. 

He smiled a little, glad they had so much unbroken leave time. Downtime was always nice, and as he turned the water off and stood there dripping and flushed, he was thinking pleased thoughts about not having to worry about tomorrow.   
While he was rubbing pomade into his hair and wondering if Jack would take him up on that run, he heard voices start up in the room outside. 

Jack was sitting on the edge of the bed when he left the bathroom, with one foot on the floor and the other curled under his leg.   
He had his work phone wedged between his shoulder and ear and was hastily tabbing through something on his tablet. 

“Well, yes, sir. No, sir. Thank you! Yes, that’s all of it. Yes, I’ve already CCd Marshall Ailes, as well as Lieutenant Greaves.”  
Gabriel stood off to the side of the bed, rubbing his head with the towel and squinting at Jack a little.  
Jack--who glanced at him once wiht a completely blank face before looking back at his tablet. 

Gabriel felt a pang of sadness--they were supposed to have some time off and here their bosses were, calling Jack.   
“That sounded bad,” he said, after Jack had hung up.  
But the other man turned a sunny smile on him and tossed his phone onto the nightstand without a glance. “Usual stuff. You know how Ailes and Greaves are.”  
“The paperwork fetishist and the PR perfectionist. God, I don’t even want to ask what they called for, do I?”  
Jack shook his head, reaching for him. “It’s not important,” he said.  
Gabriel would remember the breezy, open tone of his voice as he spoke for years afterwards, even after the rest of the salt-scented memory had been worn to faded tatters in his mind.

Ailes’ office was cold, and decorated--if you wanted to call it that--like a bad caricature of a military officer’s office, circa 2000--a framed portrait of the president glaring down a long, hawkish nose and over the shoulder of General Ailes himself.  
The desk was a slab of oak polished so highly it was reflecting the flags hung from gilt-capped flagpoles to either side of the president’s portrait--the American flag on one side, and the UN flag on the other--and covering nearly every other free spot on the remaining walls to the left and right there were an assortment of framed medals, certificates, and plaques. 

Ailes had called them to his office over ‘something important’, he’d said. He had not specified what, exactly.   
Gabriel had been worried, when Ailes had asked them to come in to speak with him in person.   
It had gotten worse when Ailes started talking.

“This is some of the finest investigative work I’ve ever seen, Morrison,” Ailes was saying. He kept tapping the folder on his desk.  
Gabriel felt the air in his lungs turn to ash. He looked over at Jack, his whole body going cold.  
Jack, who straightened, preening, and nodded once. “Thank you, sir!”  
The rest of the conversation would fade away to memory, after time, but one thing that always came back as clear as a whiplash scar was the absent-minded way Ailes glanced over at him and nodded, once, as if to merely acknowledge his presence. 

As soon as Ailes was out of earshot,Gabriel turned t face Jack and mumbled, “We need to talk.”  
JAck looked at him in undisguised surprise. “Oh. Uh. Right now? We do?”  
“Yes,” Gabriel said, his voice tight, “Right now.”

There were plenty of empty conference halls, but it seemed like Ailes had flapped his jowls to everyone in the building--people kept stopping Jack to congratulate him on the commendation, more than half of them barely acknowledging Gabriel standing there at all. Those who _did_ made the mistake of asking what commendation he’d gotten--they seemed to think since Jack had gotten some good attention, he must have, as well.  
Gabriel felt invisible, used up and tossed aside like trash.  
He kept his shit together until they got to the car and Jack turned to him with a quizzical look.  
“So…you wanted to talk?”

Gabriel felt a surge of anger so quick he clenched his hands into fists on his legs, inhaling sharply. His keys bit hard into his palm, hard enough that he flinched and dropped them, hissing in pain.  
“Gabriel?” Jack said, reaching for him.  
“Not now,” he snapped. He slammed the keys into the ignition and started the engine, gritting his teeth in frustration.  
They’d only been driving a few minutes when Jack said, “…It might have gone better if you’d chimed in, you know.”  
“Not _NOW_ , Jack,” Gabriel said again, not looking at him.

Jack made an unbelieving noise. “What? What is it? You know what, Gabe, sometimes I just don’t _GET_ you! Why are you acting like this? Our report got commendations from HQ, the intel it presents is definitely going to save a lot of lives--why are you--”  
“I don’t want to talk right now,” Gabriel said. He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly his fingers were starting to ache, his knees rigid in his seat.  
Jack _finally_ seemed to get the message. “All right, all right, fine. Maybe when we get home you’ll be over…whatever _this_ is,” Jack said.  
 _This_ , Gabriel wanted to say, was _betrayal_ , and how the hell was he supposed to just ‘get over’ that?  
He held himself together until they got back to his place.

The second the door was locked behind them, he started talking.  
“Where was the last place you saw that report, Jack?” Gabriel asked him. “Hmm? Tell me.”  
Jack shrugged. “I--I don’t know, you sent me an old proof awhile back. I read it over and double-checked it to make sure it was sound, and--” he started to gesture, raising his hands. “I figured--”  
“And you _SUBMITTED IT_?!” Gabriel said.

Jack stopped talking, his hand falling back to his side. “I…I thought you’d be proud.”  
Gabriel scoffed. “You thought I’d be _PROUD_ that you _TOOK MY RESEARCH_ and put _YOUR_ name first, filled in a few blanks, and then handed it in?”  
“It was _both_ of our work!”  
“No, it was _my_ work that I _showed you_ , and you _read_!” Gabriel said.  
He snatched off the beret he’d been wearing, crushed it in one hand, and ran his hands over his scalp, his fingertips digging in hard, as he paced across the room towards the window.  
“How? Why--why would you DO this?”

“Because it was an important report,” Jack said. “I don’t know why you were sitting on information that sensitive, anyway! You know--”  
“--And you thought I would be _PROUD_? Of _WHAT_?”  
“I finished it! I did what you’re always telling me to do! I--I followed the trail, I--”  
“You read _MY_ sources and cobbled the last four pages of a thirty-page report together, is what you did! Were you even going to _ASK_?”

“We were working on the report together,” Jack said, in a voice as bland as oatmeal. “I didn’t know you were so protective of some--”  
Jack’s words washed out. All he could think of, all Gabriel could see, was the memory of Ailes shaking Jack’s hand.  
The patronizing nod Ailes had given him, the consolation prize, the ‘maybe next time, kid,’ gesture reserved solely for kids on the losing team, for second-prize-runner-up contestants.

Then there had been the fury, raging through his body like a physical itch, and he’d had to clench his teeth and his fists to avoid saying something embarrassing.   
Ailes hadn’t given him permission to speak.  
He thought of Jack, in the car, telling him he should have ‘chimed in’, as if he were allowed, as if that were anywhere in the realm of probability for things he could have done.

Instead he’d had to stand there like a wooden dummy or trained dog, listening to his superior praise his lover for _his_ hard work, while he choked on his own impotent rage.  
“...finished it anyway, an when were you going to turn it in? When the intel was old and out-of-date? We needed it as soon as possible!”  
“WHAT ‘WE’, JACK? Who is ‘WE’?” Gabriel was actually shouting now, and Jack was still giving him that nervous, blank look--the look white people give strange brown men they encounter in public.  
Gabriel felt cold and hot all over, in stinging waves. He was pacing back and forth in front of the TV, still gripping his head.

“...Overwatch central command,” Jack said, quietly. He was still giving Jack a strange look.   
“Oh, so that’s ‘we’ when you refer to our superiors now? Huh? You’re one of _THEM_ now? On the same level as the suits? ” Gabriel said.   
“We’re all part of this organization to help people, Gabriel,” Jack said, still bland.   
“Helping _people_? Or helping _YOURSELF_ to _MY WORK_?”  
Jack looked away, his face still blank. He sighed and shook his head.  
“You know what, I just…let’s talk about this later when you’re not so…worked up. You need to calm down.”

“I _AM_ calm, Jack! Don’t _DO_ that, you--” Gabriel choked on what he was saying, on his own anger.  
Jack was looking at him with something like pity, now. “Listen, I honestly didn’t think you’d mind. If I’d known you were going to overract like this, I never would have done it.”  
“I am _NOT OVERREACING_!” Gabriel yelled.  
“You’re literally screaming, Gabe,” Jack said. He was speaking slowly, in patronizing tones used to deflect the attentions of a child throwing a tantrum.   
“BECAUSE YOU TOOK MY REPORT, PUT YOUR NAME ON IT, AND THEN SUBMITTED IT LIKE IT WAS YOURS!”  
“It was only a report,” Jack said, after a long moment. “And you said yourself, both our names were on it.”

Gabriel flung his arms wide, his mouth working open as he tried to find words.   
None came; the anger was too immediate. “That’s it? ‘Only’ a report, huh? If it was _ONLY_ a report, then why did you--”  
“Okay, Gabriel, you know what, I’m just…gonna go. I think you’re blowing this out of proportion and maybe we need a break. What am I supposed to do, if every time I try to work with you, this is how you react?”  
Jack was already moving towards the door when Gabriel spoke.  
“You didn’t work with me! It was MY report!”

Jack gave him a strange look and shook his head. “What is it with you and this whole ‘lone wolf’ shtick, Gabe? Drop the machismo! It was a _report_ Gabe, we’re _supposed_ to turn those into our superiors.”  
“Oh, yeah, we’re supposed to just TAKE EACH OTHER’S REPORTS AND TURN THEM IN WHENEVER THE FUCK WE FEEL LIKE IT?”  
“Gabe, if you keep being this loud, the neighbors are going to call the watchman…”  
“GOD DAMN IT, STOP TELLING ME HOW LOUD I’M BEING! I KNOW! I FUCKING KNOW! BUT YOU CAN’T JUST--TAKE MY FUCKING WORK AND THEN EXPECT ME TO BE CALM! JACK! -- _JACK_!”  
Of course Jack left him standing there on his own front porch, shouting at his boyfriend like a drunken asshole trying to win an argument.

Jack walked to his truck as fast as he could.

He watched as Jack peeled out of the driveway, taking the last turn by the mailbox quickly enough that he startled an older couple and their dog. When he was gone there was nothing left to disturb the illusion of a peaceful town-house community, all the cute little Mission-style townhouses with their white plaster walls and sunny orange-tiled eaves.  
Gabriel rounded on one foot and went back inside, slamming the front door so hard the windows rattled. 

~

“Boss?” Jesse asked. His voice was distorted through the door, from the echoes off the tile; Gabriel pulled on a shirt, sighing, and took a final look at his face in the mirror.

His face looked like a piece of rotten fruit--dark bags beneath his eyes, his cheeks gaunt.   
When he met his reflection’s eyes, he jerked away as if stung.  
He hadn’t slept right, after Jack had left, and he’d called Jack’s apartment three times and his cellphone twice. The second time it had rung twice and then hung up immediately.  
He’d stopped trying, after that. He could take a hint.  
Looking back later, he would feel stupid for trying to call Jack to make amends in the first place. 

“...Boss?” Jesse tried again. His voice sounded quiet, almost feeble.   
“Calm down, kid, hang on,” he said.  
Jesse came over to ‘check in’ often enough that he practically lived at Gabe’s place, one of the stipulations Overwatch command had given him as part of the second-chance program he was in. That was the initial cause; and initially he’d been wary as a stray tomcat, coming no farther than the front room and refusing to so much as eat anything Gabriel had offered him.

That had lasted for all of three months, before the terrible food at the dorm where they’d set him up had driven him in search of something decent to eat.  
Gabriel could still remember the way the kid’s face had looked when he’d come over one day and Gabe had just put a pot of posole on the stove; for the first time, Jesse had hemmed and hawed and clearly kept inventing excuses not to leave, until his stomach growled and he panicked for a second before Gabe took pity and asked him to stay.

The memory was enough that he smiled a little, sighing. At least, he thought, this was one thing he could handle. 

When he finally left the bathroom, Jesse was standing there with his hat in one hand, and he took one look at Gabriel and then very quickly looked away.  
“Uh, boss, maybe I shouldn’t say nothin’…” Jesse hedged. He was scratching his elbow, looking at the floor, the wall. Finally he looked at Gabriel.  
“...But you’re going to anyway, right?” Gabriel asked. 

Jesse fidgeted and played with his hat. Finally he gave him a nervous smile and said, “Well, it’s just…lately you ain’t been lookin’ so good…Are you, uh,” he scratched himself behind one ear, “Are you o--”  
The grim mood returned with a crushing force.  
“I’m _fine_ ,” Gabriel snapped, when he realized the direction the younger man was going. “ _Everything_ is _fine_.”

The way McCree recoiled as if he’d burned him hurt Gabriel; he sighed again.  
“Just…stressed out. Work. You know, that thing responsible adults have to deal with,” he said.  
The sarcasm fell flat, though, and when he looked over at Jesse he could still see nervousness and worry written all over his face.   
Gabriel decided changed the subject as quickly as possible, after seeing that face.

He started back towards the kitchen, rounding the corner and going to sit in one of the chairs at the table. There were papers scattered everywhere, Jesse’s laptop in the center of the mess. The lid was covered with stickers, mostly old, scratched-up travel ones--Hollywood, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon. The laptop itself was something Gabriel had bought for him as a congratulatory gift for getting his GED and enrolling in college courses.   
“Finish your homework?”

At that, Jesse flopped down into his chair, deflating like a popped balloon. “Aww, boss!”  
“Don’t give me that ‘Aww boss’ crap, kid,” Gabriel said. He felt equal parts annoyance and affection; Jesse was smart but lazy unless pushed along. He also had a habit of being stubborn and contrary, deciding that if he couldn’t be or do one thing, he’d go the complete opposite way and do the polar opposite; Gabriel was honestly a bit worried about that. 

“I got a couple more pages of that essay done, if you wanna read ‘em,” Jesse said.   
“Sure,” Gabriel said, and Jesse handed him the papers.  
Gabriel read over them, leaning his head against one hand as he did. His eyes felt like they were made of dry, splintering wood; the headache he’d been nursing was coming back with a slow, vicious vengeance, and he could feel the hot throbbing starting up in his temples. 

He paused after a moment, when he realized Jesse wasn’t typing or doing anything besides staring at him. He looked over gave Jesse an amused, tired smile. “Are you really going to sit here and watch me read this? Don’t you have more work to do?”

“Uh--! Well, yeah, but I also wanted to talk to you about somethin’.”  
“Go ahead. But,” he added, “Don’t think you’re going to get out of me editing this with some long-winded story, Jesse. You might be slick, but I’m not that old yet.”  
Jesse chuckled a little, but shook his head. He fiddled with the hem of his shirt for a minute before he began.

“Well, I been thinkin’…An’ I was talkin’ to some other guys in one of my classes, and…well. They were sayin’ some stuff about the service…so I got to thinkin’, an’ I asked around…And, well--Commander Morrison says if I join up, they c’n clean my record up! He says there’s this old law that’s still on the books where, if you’re a convict an’ you go into the military--any branch--an’ you do good enough an’ keep your nose clean, they wipe your record an’ you can start over! I was thinkin’ that sounded pretty good, huh, Boss?” 

Gabe had started massaging one aching temple and trying his hardest to get his eyes to focus on the words on the pages. He felt his eyes widen in shock. He whipped his head around to face Jesse before he even finished talking. 

“No,” he said, the word out before he even thought.  
Jesse looked confused for a second. “What? But--”  
“I said _NO_ ,” Gabriel said, more firmly this time.  
He didn’t even know why, but he could feel panic rising inside himself--this was wrong, something was wrong.   
Everywhere he felt like he saw walls, doors slamming in his face and being locked from the other side. 

And here was his precious, half-wild boy, the only one he’d managed to save from the clusterfuck that was the Deadlock roundup, trying to run headlong into a maze of white faces that would chew him up and spit him back out, with all the ‘unacceptable’ parts scoured away. He didn’t save him from the frying pan only to see him jump headfirst into a fire--not if he could help it.

Gabriel knew he’d make it as far as an NCO, maybe--if he was lucky and had senior officers who knew he was Jack’s pet brown kid. That was the same lie he’d heard recruiters tell all kinds of poor kids with juvenile detention records, who were trying to get their shit together and go straight.  
It always ended the same way.  
He felt cold needles in his gut and in his chest.

“But Boss…you said I had to do somethin’. What if…what if that’s my somethin’?” Jesse said.  
The desperate, hurting look he gave him was like a razor-lined hug. Gabriel started to stand, forced himself to stay in his chair.   
“Jesse…” he began.

“I…I been thinkin’, boss, an’ I know I ain’t…good at school shit--um, stuff. Maybe it’ll be seven, eight years before I manage to get anything done. But that much time in the army? Commander Morrison says--”  
“Jack says a lot of things that don’t hold any water,” Gabe said, and now the cold prickles were hot, angry ones.   
“Yeah, but--”

“Jesse, just…do your damn homework and stop trying to weasel out of it.” he said. He went back to rubbing his temples, his eyes squeezed shut.   
He paused when he didn’t hear any more typing or shuffling papers, and when he looked over, Jesse was giving him a sad-eyed look. “You don’t even want to talk about it. Is it ‘cause you think I wouldn’t make the cut?”  
“What? Jesse, no, that’s not--”

“Well, then, why? You--you wouldn’t even let me _talk_ about it, just keep tellin’ me no over’n’over like I’m your kid askin’ to buy me a motorbike! I ain’t a stupid _kid_. You think I don’t _know_ all this ain’t the remedial shit they give people who flunked already? I _know_ I’m behind, Boss, I _know_ I ain’t never gonna catch up to people who never dropped out an’ joined a gang or did half the stupid shit I did, but damn it, I can do right!”

Gabriel felt his eyes widen, his mouth drop open. “Jesse, I never said any of that! Listen to me, you’re not a stupid kid--but there’s--there are things you don’t understand--” He knew he couldn’t tell him the truth.   
He didn’t want to completely crush him.

“What _things_?” Jesse asked, his voice breaking. “You always have to lecture me, all the time. ‘Jesse, do this,’ an’ ‘Jesse, don’t do that,’ an’ normally, Boss, I wouldn’t say nothin’ but…you won’t even let me finish!”  
“Because this is a complicated issue and needs a lot of time to talk about.”  
Jesse made a scoffing noise. 

Gabriel was horrified to see his lower lip was trembling, and Jesse was looking at him with watery, despairing eyes.  
“Jesse…” he reached for him, but Jesse scooted his chair away and stood up, grabbing his jacket off the back.  
“At least Commander Morrison listened to me.” 

And Jesse left the kitchen, left Gabriel sitting there with one arm braced on the back of his chair and the other on the tabletop, as if he was getting ready to stand and say something important.

 

He didn’t sleep until he heard keys in the lock, the door clicking open and shut. The soft, quiet sounds of someone who thought they were sneaking into a house. Then the sound of his room door opening and closing.  
But Jesse was gone again by the morning.  
Gabriel paced circles in the kitchen and tried to remember how to make scrambled eggs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading~

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have a beta-reader or very much time anymore. I hope someone comes along on this ride.
> 
> Mostly I wrote this because I wanted to explore a side of Gabriel's character that is implied but not explicitly stated, that I think is worth focusing some attention on. 
> 
> Btw, this will also feature (more) serious discussions of in-world racism, so if that's not your cup of tea...


End file.
